So, another year, Harry's birthday has come and gone, and another anniversary of Pottermore's announcement... so how has it done? Let's check after the break.
So what of the immersive, lovely fan experience that was promised to us? Well, I think it was oversold a good deal. Looking after nearly four years of Pottermore, the good news is that the books have all been released and allegedly there's more down the pipeline, with Patronuses, and new potions that seem to be in the works. But this isn't necessarily a good thing with quality seemingly slipping in order to churn out content quicker.
This admittedly was a tradeoff for Pottermore, and users probably didn't make it better. I remember times when it would take a good few months, nearly half a year for new content, and the release of a book came out with installments, moments for each chapter, and to be honest, it was disappointing after the release of Chamber. I am not certain if the decision to speed things up was necessarily a smart one, or a bad one, but debatably it's helped with the lulls incrementally. The Half-Blood Prince release was actually my favorite SINCE Chamber of Secrets, partially because of the staggared release of chapters, day by day, with a riddle to enter. However, this "blow it fast" mentality with Pottermore in putting out content has resulted in sub-par releases, and with those releases being able to be gone through in just an hour, if not less.
The vast majority of users, I think, are slightly more sophisticated than a four year old when playing this "I Spy" part of Pottermore. Yes there are hard things to find. But we find them online. We work together and basically put out guides on where that little treat in Deathly Hallows is. Pottermore, it seems, doesn't give the userbase enough credit (except when perhaps, that has to do with getting around filters).
So what about games? We're still stalled there as well. Yes, a few new potions have been added, and it appears that another potion is on the horizon, but it's still no substitute to new features that users have been clammoring for since the site's opening, like quidditch, and perhaps being able to do something with all those items in the trunk.
Pottermore is, at best a C-. Rowling's gift to the users has sort of played to a mixed result. Users can get together, but not on Pottermore. Users can duel and brew, and learn more about the world, but all of this was so limited, and so underperformed to everything that was promised, that I don't see many mega-fans being impressed or wowed by Pottermore.
Maybe there will be spikes in usership. Maybe Pottermore will be better soon. I always hope that the people that run the site will prove me wrong. But a C- is nothing to be proud about, and as time goes on, it slips closer and closer to being a D or an F. So please, if any of you executives are actually reading this, talk with us. Fix Pottermore and make it something that matches the high standard set by Potter as a whole.
This admittedly was a tradeoff for Pottermore, and users probably didn't make it better. I remember times when it would take a good few months, nearly half a year for new content, and the release of a book came out with installments, moments for each chapter, and to be honest, it was disappointing after the release of Chamber. I am not certain if the decision to speed things up was necessarily a smart one, or a bad one, but debatably it's helped with the lulls incrementally. The Half-Blood Prince release was actually my favorite SINCE Chamber of Secrets, partially because of the staggared release of chapters, day by day, with a riddle to enter. However, this "blow it fast" mentality with Pottermore in putting out content has resulted in sub-par releases, and with those releases being able to be gone through in just an hour, if not less.
The vast majority of users, I think, are slightly more sophisticated than a four year old when playing this "I Spy" part of Pottermore. Yes there are hard things to find. But we find them online. We work together and basically put out guides on where that little treat in Deathly Hallows is. Pottermore, it seems, doesn't give the userbase enough credit (except when perhaps, that has to do with getting around filters).
So what about games? We're still stalled there as well. Yes, a few new potions have been added, and it appears that another potion is on the horizon, but it's still no substitute to new features that users have been clammoring for since the site's opening, like quidditch, and perhaps being able to do something with all those items in the trunk.
Pottermore is, at best a C-. Rowling's gift to the users has sort of played to a mixed result. Users can get together, but not on Pottermore. Users can duel and brew, and learn more about the world, but all of this was so limited, and so underperformed to everything that was promised, that I don't see many mega-fans being impressed or wowed by Pottermore.
Maybe there will be spikes in usership. Maybe Pottermore will be better soon. I always hope that the people that run the site will prove me wrong. But a C- is nothing to be proud about, and as time goes on, it slips closer and closer to being a D or an F. So please, if any of you executives are actually reading this, talk with us. Fix Pottermore and make it something that matches the high standard set by Potter as a whole.
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